Today’s the day Karak-Izor players get to start the transfer process and pick their new server out of a few choices (Karak Eight Peaks, Karak-Hirn, Karak-Norn, Karak-Azgal). For information about the transfer process, take a look here.

We wish all the players find happy homes on more populated servers and get to kick butt alongside their new realm mates. And for the receiving servers – be nice to your new additions!

In the first of what we hope will become a series of interviews with European guilds across a number of servers, we start with XXI Grams, who play on Karak Eight Peaks. I’d like to thank Grindhouse, their guild leader a lot for answering my questions, I think they’re bound to give some interesting insights into what others are doing in the game. So please get in touch (in comments or via email or twitter) if you would like to answer a similar set of questions!

Tell us a little about your guild, why that name, when they formed and what server they play on?

We are a guild of a small core of players, our goal at creation was to have 2 prefixed groups running on a daily basis to have some nice 6v6 fights and 6vx and 12vzerg. We chose the name 21 Grams (XXI Grams couse numbers are not allowed in WAR) becouse it has a deeper meaning than just numbers, you know as they say: Quote from the movie: ” How many lives do we live? How many times do we die? They say we all lose 21 grams… at the exact moment of our death. Everyone. And how much fits into 21 grams? How much is lost? How much is gained? Twenty-one grams. The weight of a stack of five nickels. The weight of a hummingbird. A chocolate bar. How much did 21 grams weigh?” people say and it’s confirmed by science that you actually do lose 21 grams when you you die, so it kinda grew into a superstition about you losing your soul.

We formed about 6 months prior to launch of WAR, where we also played in the closed and open beta. We chose to play on Karak Eight Peaks, becouse alot of old friends from DAoC also went to the same server, we kinda tried to agree on one server prior to launch to know where to go, to create our community of old DAoC’ers.

How many members do you have?

At this point we are running in 2 prefixed groups, 12 people, but we do have 1-2 backups when someone is in slack mode.

What’s been the best thing you’ve done in Warhammer Online? As a guild, and personally?

The best thing we’ve done in Warhammer.. I think that so far has been putting up a challenge vs order as a small scale guild, killing twice our numbers and organized and promoted some 6v6 fights in locked zones for some fun, because the mindless zerg is pretty much boring and not interesting without Crowd Control. Personally I think, the best thing I’ve done is to create the guild we are now. Having a core of great people and members and friends in the guild from all different nationalities, we have loads of fun, we laugh a lot together and we got a new Motto: Just Click It – Jokes aside, yes the best thing I’ve done is to make all those people come together and become friends and strive for more than just playing a game.

How do you approach guild leadership?

Guild leadership is not a big issue with us, because every member of the guild is a mature player with whom we all can get along with. Everyone has something to say and contribute to various ideas and whatnot. Recruitment, zerging, 6v6 groups, lost vale and so forth. In the end I do take the big descisions and sign the deal. But pretty much every guildmember has to agree, we’re like a board who has to reach a unanimous descision.

What’s great about the server you play on?

The great and fun thing about our server is, that there are alot of old DAoC guilds who support small scale combat and RvR, and more are coming as they see we do it more and more often. So we do hope that in the end, the zerg will stop and the 6v6 will start!

How did you go about picking a faction?

This is a funny story, becouse initially we were supposed to play Order. But when we were about to pick server, we were looking at which guilds were going on which faction, and we wanted to be on the underpopulated/underskilled side, to be challenged by other players and guilds. So when we noticed and saw that the majority of old familiar DAoC faces went to Order, we decided Destruction.

What’s the biggest problem you have with WAR currently?

Zerg – I cant stress this enough Zerg is bad, zerg doesnt require any skill, only by the zerg leader, Souzy <3, so all you do is, you have 1 person leading 4 warbands, with half of them going afk, and doing a Tab 44444 to hit the door. We are trying to promote 6v6 combat as much as possible, not only is it fun, but in the same time as a zerg can get a full zone capped, you can get twice the renown points dong 6v6. it’s alot more challenging, requires more coordination, teamplay and skill and makes the game so much more interesting and fun. Ohh and ofc LAG at forts.. and zone crashed and the fact that they totally killed and nerfed Chosens 😦

What do you tell people who don’t play about the game?

Not that much to be honest, but if I see a guy/girl playing a diff game I’d definately try to get him/her to play WAR. Maybe tell the person how the game works and stuff, but most people I know who doesn’t play this game, doesn’t play any other game.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention about the guild, the server, or the game?

I love the game and I love the server we are playing on. Could use some twitches and more 6v6 promotion and balance. Other than that, all I can say is, promote 6v6 guys, make it happen, take up a challenge, fight for your honour and your guildname and colours. Make people know, that you pwn! And remember – Just Click It!

XXI Grams have just released an RvR video that’s well worth watching, so hop on over and check it out!

A bunch of Warhammer Online videos taken from action on Karak Eight Peaks. There’s a wealth of videos to choose from, and it’s great to have them all available. Do you have anything similar? Let us know and we’ll take a look!

And Roo, famous from DAoC days, over at Freddyshouse, has returned to verse to produce something pretty spectacular in a thread about potential Dwarf Slayers:

Young orc, der’s no need to feel glum.
Me said, young orc, kick a dorf in da bum.
Me said, young orc, ‘cos you’re in a new zone
Der’s no need to be unhappy.

Young orc, don’t get hit in da face.
Me said, young orc, knockback elves into space.
You can slay dem, and Me sure you will find
Many ways to be ded rock’ard.

It fun to slay at da F-O-R-T.
It fun to slay at da F-O-R-T.

Dey have everyfing dat you need to enjoy,
Kick da jibblies of all da elves…

It fun to slay at da F-O-R-T.
It fun to slay at da F-O-R-T.

You is green and you mean, biggest orc on da scene
You can eat all the gobbos you see …

Young orc, are you listening to me?
Me said, young orc, get some skulls on your gear.
Me said, young orc, No! Flowers make you look queer.
But you got to know dis one fing!

No orc does it all by himself.
Me said, young orc, get dorf heads on your shelf,
And just go there, to the F.O.R.T.
Me’s sure dey can rez you today.

I always think it’s interesting how different servers can end up feeling so diverse. We all started from the same point, but from reading forums you could get the impression that some are utopian oases of plenty, where players (distributed evenly between both sides) rejoice in plentiful PQs, fair play, incredible realm coordination, live Muse concerts*, and other forms of crazy debauchery.

Then there is Karak Eight Peaks.

You may remember this server name because it was the EU server on which we reported the first capital city under siege. This turned out to have exposed a barrel load of exploits by which Destruction players had been able to sneak into fortresses through the postern doors, and so on. Mythic addressed these fairly quickly, but the story on K8P didn’t end there.

From my perspective, the only reason I take part in destro RvR warbands to capture and sack Altdorf is for the epic gear. As you probably know, you can get some of the best gear in the game via purchase with blue defender gems, and the easiest way to get these atm is through quests in Altdorf.

Pandemic@FH lists all the issues he has seen on K8P. Some of these issues have already been hotfixed on US servers (the marauder fix for example) but not yet on EU. Destruction players also noted issues with Order being able to run unflagged into the fortresses to defend (usually on a Core server, you automatically get flagged 10s after entering an RvR lake – I haven’t seen the fortresses myself but if they are close enough to a warcamp that you could get to the postern door within 10s this is a huge issue). And as if that wasn’t enough, the server has also had a bug with people being able to join groups.

Yesterday as many of you may have noticed, we reset the campaign on the Karak Eight peaks server. This is not something we did lightly but it was the only way to resolve the problems of stuck zones that have been widely reported by players there. As a result the tier four zones and keeps have been reset to their default ownership and it is once again possible to fight over and capture zones.

We were discussing last night our reactions to the first City Siege which took place on Karak Eight-Peaks on October 1st and whipped up some of the worst fears out there about population imbalance. It got a lotof press, let’s put it that way! And we didn’t really post much about our reactions to it, because it was all so fresh at the time. Suffice it to say both Spinks and myself take the approach of – obviously broken, Mythic will fix it. It was more like a hark back to beta, players managed to find something wrong, devs will look into it.

And lo and behold, a couple of days later we get the response we expected. This wasn’t supposed to happen (thanks Sugarcubes – extra points if you get that reference), and the things that let it happen as it did have been tweaked.

They were able to get in through the postern (back) door of the one of the fortresses which is ordinarily only accessible to the defending side therefore bypassing many of the defenses and guards they’d have to get through to achieve access to the Fortress’ Lord.

In addition the timer to lock down two Fortresses in any two of the three pairings (which is how you unlock the city for assault) was set incorrectly at 36 hours instead of 12.

We have also recently increased the difficulty of Fortress Guards and Lords to create an even more challenging experience.

Couple these with a lack of defending players and it’s clear how they were able to assault the city.

James goes on to note:

The city itself worked perfectly as designed and the attacking force was unable to defeat a single Public Quest within barring them from locking the city down and gaining access to the King.

Let’s make no mistake, the game is officially only around 2 weeks old, and while we’ve all be lulled into security by the smoothness of the launch, there are bound to be other bugs and exploits that are dotted throughout and will need quick fixes. What matters is that the devs note them and fix them, and that we, as players, report them. I actually found an exploit while messing around on a Witch Hunter, and I’ve reported it. Let’s keep that up and not stress out too much about those who find them, it’s all helping make the game better going forward.

I guarantee there will be more and more attempts to capture cities as the weeks roll on and the strong Destruction sides (especially) give it a go. Bring it on, I say. And let’s look forward to the first reports of attacks on the Inevitable City!

Well, it’s the first one we have heard about. Destruction locked down the two dwarf and elf fortresses in a late night siege and have been assaulting Altdorf on Karak Eight Peaks (EU). It’s worth knowing that this is one of the most heavily populated EU servers which regularly has queues for both sides.